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The Art of Politics

Some "Politically Incorrect" Ideas

By Judy Osborne

Unless a really cool party or some other compelling event happens to upset my routine, most nights I’m brushing my teeth when “Politically Incorrect” lights up my TV screen. The water keeps right on running while host Bill Maher does his sappy monologue, but I pay attention when Maher introduces his four guests.

My nightly challenge is to figure out, before the dialog begins, which one of the guests is speaking for the religious right. There’s always one. You know instantly which it is the moment the panel starts arguing -- it’s the one who skillfully finds ways to inject religious-right talking points into the discussion.

The group almost always begins with an obligatory analysis of Monica Lewinski and the Prez, after which topics drift off into other salacious stuff like ex-gay ministries, Southern Baptist ideas about women’s roles, transsexuals in the workplace, protecting our kid’s morals via censorship, sometimes even sinking so low as to make references to pedophiles, transvestites and kleptomaniacs. After all, the show is called "Politically Incorrect".

Picking the winners and losers each night depends, I suspect, on each viewer’s prejudice. I certainly can’t keep an impartial score. It’s simply worth observing this little chunk of a saturation campaign that’s going on in the media. Somebody who’s very well prepared shows up every night for a dinky little late-night talk show to present the viewpoint of the fundamentalist right.

The fun part is watching the representative try to struggle with the program’s humor. Humor just isn’t the right’s strong suit. That’s too bad, because a bunch of really zany stuff is going on in the religious right’s campaign to make this a Christian nation. A while ago, Southern Baptists decided to boycott Disney because Ellen came out as a lesbian in a show aired on Disney-owned ABC-TV and because Disney offers domestic-partner benefits. This year the Southern Baptists stayed on their roll by proclaiming that “wives should submit graciously” to their husband’s “servant leadership.” Not to be outdone, Pat Robertson of the Christian Coalition warned the city of Orlando that tolerance of homosexuality, as represented by Gay Days at Disney World, will bring “terrorist bombs, it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor” to the hapless city.

The Senate Majority Leader compared gays to alcoholics and kleptomaniacs, prompting the host at a fund-raiser put on by a gay couple to begin his introduction of President Clinton by saying “Mr. President, here’s your watch back” (everybody got the joke except the President). The House Majority leader chimed in by quoting the Bible. “Neither fornicators, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor abusers of themselves shall inherit the Kingdom of God,” he thundered, neglecting to mention other scriptures that require stubborn and rebellious sons to be stoned to death and make women responsible for all sin.

James Dobson of Focus On the Family called on Congress to ignore a decision of the Supreme Court. Christian ministries seem to be springing up all over the place purporting to “cure” homosexuals, a treatment regime which the American Psychological Association has roundly discredited. A vote remains stalled which would confirm a highly-regarded gay philanthropist as Ambassador to Luxembourg, not exactly a pivotal nation in our foreign-policy plan. The Boy Scouts of America have ordered Unitarian Universalists to stop giving religious medals to their Boy Scouts because the Unitarians refuse to condemn gays.

And that’s just the fun stuff. Christian right leadership actually thinks it has captured the Republican party. Maybe it has. James Dobson wrote several very nasty notes to Republican legislators threatening to pull out the support of his own five million Christian conservatives plus a vast number of supporters from other organizations, a strategy which would leave a number of Republican legislators without any hope of gathering a majority of voters in their districts.

Newt Gingrich was frightened enough by Dobson’s threat to make a number of promises to Dobson and actually deliver on them. Among these, Dobson demanded a House vote before November’s election for the so-called “Religious Freedom” Amendment. By allowing a majority vote to determine religious issues, the Amendment would have the effect of denying religious freedom to everybody except Christians. Gingrich delivered the vote and actually managed to get a bare majority in favor of it, though not the two thirds required to amend the Constitution. Dobson took names and withdrew his support from those who didn’t vote his way. He intends, according to reports, to use Focus On the Family’s vast network of publications and broadcast outlets to smear as “anti-religious” all those legislators still believe in religious freedom. Dobson, incidentally, acknowledges that one of his political goals is to write into law his understanding of the Ten Commandments.

Oklahoma Congressman Steve Largent (yes, he is the former Seahawk hero) succeeded in micromanaging the District of Columbia with an amendment to an appropriations bill which prevents unmarried couples from adopting children, prohibits spending Federal or local funds for needle exchange, and weakens the already-poor schools with a voucher program. Meanwhile, the Texas State Board of Education seems poised to achieve an eight-to-seven majority of Christian conservatives voting together. The conservatives plan to mandate classroom prayers, require schools to teach creationism, end AIDS and sexuality instruction, establish a state-funded voucher program, and post the Ten Commandments in school buildings all over Texas.

Although the Christian right and the rest of society automatically lump transgender issues together with gay issues whenever they’re thinking about oppressive legislation, transgendered people have been getting special attention from the right whenever the situation warrants. Gary Bauer, head of the Family Research Council, picked on transsexuals in a recent letter attacking all sexual minorities. Bauer called for the defeat of legislators “supporting a bill allowing the re-issue of birth certificates for persons with a sex change operation.” In Washington state recently, transgendered woman Sheila Richardson was kicked out of her county Republican party after two years of service because she personally supported a civil-rights initiative for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people. Log Cabin Republicans (a major gay political organization) was banned from the Texas Republican conference this year. The conference spokesperson explained the banishment by saying “we don’t allow pedophiles, transvestites or crossdressers either.”

Not everything is bad or smacking of negativity. A straight, 13-year-old Life Scout (one step below Eagle, the highest) from Petaluma, California, is circulating petitions, holding press conferences, writing politicians and hounding reporters in an effort to get the Boy Scouts to stop discriminating against gays. He’s saying that “what they are teaching people is to discriminate instead of loving everyone and giving everyone the same chances.” The Girl Scouts continue to accept members of all faiths, not just Christians, even though that decision prompted one of Dobson’s publications to accuse the Girl Scouts of “pushing a philosophy . . . that includes humanism and radical feminism.” The National Federation of Independent Businesses actually has endorsed eight Democrats for seats in the House. An amendment to overturn President Clinton’s executive order banning discrimination against gays was defeated in the Republican-controlled House. And Representative Ernest Istook (R-OK), chief sponsor of Dobson’s “Religious Freedom” Amendment, was awarded a 10-inch bronze facsimile of a horse’s rear end by People for the American Way.

Still, Dobson, Bauer, and Robertson are placing considerable pressure on Republican politicians to advance the Christian right’s social movement through legislation. They’re concentrating on anti-gay issues, abortion, prayer and posting the Ten Commandments in schools, government subsidies to religious schools, defunding safe sex education and condom distribution, defunding the Department of Education, and defunding the National Endowment for the Arts. Dobson wrote a letter last February to Rep. Tom Coburn and all the other Republicans in Congress, stressing his concerns “and the concerns of millions of evangelical Christians.” Dobson concluded ominously, “this is late February . . . in the final year of the 105th Congress, and there is very little to show for the confidence placed in Republicans by the 43 percent of its constituency who gave them power in 1994. And the clock is ticking.”

There’s so much more, but I run on too long.

The 105th Congress hasn’t done much of anything this year, Christian-mandated or otherwise, though the verbal attack against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people certainly has escalated. Some of the fundamentalist’s demands have been finding their way through the legislative process, and prominent Republicans seem to be testing the water by making increasingly intolerant comments while keeping an eye on the polls for signs of a backlash. Starr’s report has interrupted that procedure, but we can expect more hateful rhetoric to be spewed out before election day in November. A strong showing by Republicans this fall, in spite all this stridency, would give the party a green light to satisfy the demands of this large Christian right constituency of theirs, while a Democratic victory would erode the Christian right’s influence over the Republican Party.

This November’s election holds the key to whether or not the Christian fundamentalist social movement can succeed. Will the excesses of words and deeds from the right cause a backlash from voters, as Republicans fear? Or will all those words and deeds have little or no effect, relieving the Republican leadership from having to tiptoe so carefully around Dobson’s, Robertson’s and Bauer’s demands? How will the Clinton/Lewinski wild card alter the odds? Will the stock market and the economy crash, causing pain and a search for scapegoats? Which party will capture governor’s mansions and state legislatures in this and the next couple of elections, giving that party the privilege of drawing new legislative-district boundaries after the millennium census?

Apathy is a tool that Christian fundamentalist leaders cherish. Government has become so inept, so negative, so unresponsive to anyone other than big campaign contributors and organizations able to deliver huge blocs of voters, that lots of citizens just aren’t voting any more. Christian Coalition National Field Director Guy Rodgers celebrated this tendency as long ago as 1992 by stating “in low turnout elections . . . the percentage of those who determine who wins can be as low as 6 or 7 percent . . . Is this sinking in? We don’t have to worry about convincing a majority of Americans to agree with us.” In fundamentalist churches all over the country, leaders are making a tremendous effort to convince their flock to come out and vote for certain candidates and issues on election day.

A low-turnout election, which already has been predicted this fall, magnifies their power. On the other hand, good news comes from none other than Newt, who proclaimed recently that “in 1996 fewer than 12,000 votes spread across just ten congressional districts gave the Republican Party control of Congress!” It won’t take too many of us to make a change. Gay Congressman Barney Frank says it well -- we each can “have a significant impact because so many others ignore the process.”

Your comments, in support or in disagreement, will be gratefully received -- heyjude@eskimo.com

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